Happy Valentine's Day. If you're one of the lucky ones, flowers, candy or heart-shaped paper wishes will add to the romance of the lovers' holiday.

But if you're David J. Hasson, Cupid has missed his mark again.

Hasson, the 29-year-old proprietor of Al the Florist, is still searching for a wife. No experience needed.

At least, that's what it says on the sign he periodically posts in front of the wooden flower stand at Telegraph Road and Slauson Avenue in Commerce.

Most people link flowers and romance, and that's the way it has been in a business sense for Hasson. He took over the operation on Valentine's Day in 1981 after his uncle, Alberto Hanan, died.

But that link is missing in his personal life--on a day when thoughts of love are shared, while he makes up bouquets for others, Hasson has no sweetheart.

Tired of the single life, Hasson began advertising for a wife last summer.

But it has been a lonely hearts club story.

'People Started Laughing'

"Do you know that when I tried out the sign, people started laughing?" Hasson said. "People are so cold in this society."

Hasson, a Sagittarius who has soft, brown eyes, a pleasant smile and thinning, wiry hair, calls himself a "simple person."

"I'm humble street-corner florist" who's "extremely pudgy."

Monday night, he snipped away at stems, stripping off leaves, his plump hands deftly arranging flowers in a small crystal vase.

Out in front, carnations, tulips, daisies and mums stayed fresh in buckets of cool water, livening the spot wedged in at the Santa Ana freeway cut-off.

As he tidied up the counter, Hasson talked about love, flowers and what drives someone to advertise his vulnerability on a business sign the way you would a luncheon special.

The sign, he said, was inspired by a story in a supermarket checkout-stand weekly. The newspaper detailed the success of an overweight man who put a similar announcement in front of his house and was swamped with 400 offers. Hasson figured he might have the same kind of luck.

"The singles scene in the U.S. is such that they've made a pretty good business out of it," Hasson, who lives in Torrance, said. "They've made loneliness into a commodity that can be sold, and I think that's kind of cold."

So were some of the responses he received from women who didn't believe he was simply looking for a wife and not just a good time.

'Halfway Serious'

"One woman was halfway serious," Hasson recalled, "but even then she told me, 'Girls just wanna have fun.' "